


red thread

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 02:48:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2605787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't always end up together. Sometimes they do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	red thread

They share many lifetimes together, each different from the last. There's one where they meet while camping, and after a few short days together Derek knows he wants to stay with Stiles. They spend much of their time riding on the open road, motorcycles drowning out all the sounds around them. There is another life where Stiles gets sick--the same disease as his mother. Stiles doesn't get to graduate during that life; he doesn't last long after he stops his treatment. They were never really together in that life.

There's a life where they both become musicians in a band. It doesn't go very well, it's virulent and bitter and it burns them both. Stiles does whatever he can to get Derek off his mind. Derek eats himself up watching Stiles torment himself.

There are many other lives; ones where they are kings and consorts, where Stiles is a Spark or a fae, even a witch at times. Lives that are simple, or complicated, or a little bit of both. Countless lives, countless first meetings in coffee shops, libraries or all because of circumstance.

In one life they are pirates and when Derek first sees him, Stiles is swinging onto his ship, managing to best most of Derek's men and take off with all of his stolen goods. Derek is too memorized by the boy's sheer energy and hearty laugh to do anything but stare. Derek never sees him again after that.

They don't always end up together.

But every time Derek is still Derek. (But different.)

And Stiles is still Stiles. (They're always the same, but different.)

The first memory Derek has of Stiles, the very first one out of their many lives, his hair is buzzed, he does not fall in love with Derek. The next memory, Stiles' hair is long and he does.

After their first lifetimes together Derek stops trying to figure out if Stiles' hair means anything. (It doesn't.)

Derek's favorites are those lives in which they are able to grow up together. When Stiles will share his secrets and cry on Derek's shoulder in the wake of his mother's death. Every time Derek plays along with Stiles bad ideas, even though he knows they are bad ideas.

(Stiles has many bad ideas.)

There are many lives where werewolves don't exist. The one Derek remembers most vivid is where his family lives, he grows up with Stiles from  young age, and they slowly fall into each other over the course of years. It's a simple life, but is among one of Derek's favorites.

Derek's family is a variable--the lifetimes in which they live Derek is softer, more welcoming. Derek has introduced Stiles to them countless times, and they always love him right from the start. (But they have died too many lifetimes to count, the smell of burning flesh and ash, the taste of smoke and the sound of his family screaming is burned into Derek's memory as much as Stiles' presence.)

When Stiles meets Derek after the loss of his family he is much more guarded, cold and harrowing. It takes longer for Stiles to get under his skin.

(In few lifetimes Stiles doesn't manage. They are part of the lifetimes they don't end up together.)

Every time Derek looses his family Stiles convinces him to rebuild his home. Sometimes they are together--they rebuild Derek's old life together, adopt a cat, and live simply. Sometimes they are not together, Stiles loves some one else and Derek remains alone. He still adopts a cat.

Sometimes it's not so simple.

Sometimes it's complicated and messy and Stiles gets lost in a daze, drunk and high just so he is able to forget Derek's face.

Sometimes it wrenches Derek's heart from his chest, leaving it out to shrivel into bits of nothing. He's always hated funerals, but each time Stiles' hits him harder than the last.

(There is a life in which Stiles kills himself. He is young and Derek had barely began to know him.)

(They don't always end up together.)

There are more funerals than weddings.

Simple weddings, extravagant weddings. Ones with his family or Stiles' mother, ones without them. All taken place in various points of time in their lives. There's been two in Las Vegas, nearly ten times as many in Derek's childhood backyard. There are five lives where they elope.

There are lives in which they don't meet until they are both adults, after Stiles has already graduated from college, settled into a tiny apartment with a comfortable job. Or a job he hates, in an apartment with a leaky ceiling and loud neighbors. 

Whenever they meet like this Stiles is more discerning. He doesn't trust Derek so easily, but it is as though he forgives Derek for their past, for all the wrong that Derek has done. Derek likes to think that Stiles is trying to make up for lost time from lives where they just barely never met. (In those lives he always thanks the late train, the snooze on his alarm--whatever it is that forces him to meet Stiles by mere seconds.)

Or for the lives where one of them doesn't exist.

The first lifetime Stiles did not exist, Derek was lost. He could never find the familiar sound of laughter, splatter of moles or frantic energy that encompassed Stiles.  
Derek hates those the most. He prefers the lives in which Stiles kills him.

But it's not Stiles, it's him, but his body is a shell and _Derek's_ Stiles doesn't live there anymore. It becomes home to a darkness that sends shivers down Derek's spine and a blade through his flesh, twisting and pulling. The smug smirk and twisted glint in Stiles' eyes is not one which Derek can easily forget. Every time they meet again after the first life in which the nogitsune took Stiles, Derek always wonders if it's really him or if it is another life where its Stiles but it's not _Stiles_.

With every lifetime Derek wonders if he will meet Stiles again, or if it is another where they don't ever cross paths, or maybe even one of the lives where Stiles doesn't exist.

Derek knows that in another lifetime they will, perhaps it won't be the next life or the one after that, but they always meet again. Yet he always wonders if it's the last time, or if Stiles is already happy with some one else.

(Lydia. Malia. Heather. Scott. Jordan. Danny.)

Derek doesn't mind if he's happy with someone else.

(They don't always end up together.)

But Derek knows that there will be a lifetime in which Stiles returns to him, maybe not in this one, maybe not in a hundred lifetimes, but Stiles will always find his way back to Derek.

(Sometimes they do.)

**Author's Note:**

> At the beginning I tried to throw in a few cameos of some popular fics. Try to guess which ones?  
> I've had this idea for a while and really wanted to do it. It's not quite what I wanted but mainly what I wanted to do was kind of encompass the red string of fate myth with the idea of alternate universes in fanfiction.


End file.
